Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 14011-h.htm or 14011-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/0/1/14011/14011-h/14011-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/0/1/14011/14011-h.zip) THE MIRROR OF LITERATURE, AMUSEMENT, AND INSTRUCTION. VOL. XIV., NO. 389.] SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1829. [PRICE 2d. * * * * * SION HOUSE. [Illustration: Sion House.] Taylor, the water poet, or Samuel Ireland, the picturesque Thames tourist, could not, in all their enthusiasm of jingling rhymes and aquatint plates, have exceeded our admiration of Sion House. Its whitened towers and battlemented roof are known to all the swan-hopping and steam navigators of our day, and none who have floated To where the silver Thames first rural grows,-- can be strangers to the magnificence of the river-front. Sion House stands in the parish of Isleworth, on the Middlesex bank of the Thames, and opposite Richmond gardens. It is called Sion from a nunnery of Bridgetines of the same name, originally founded at Twickenham, by Henry V. in 1414, and removed to this spot in 1432. This conventual association consisted of sixty nuns, the abbess, thirteen priests, four deacons, and eight lay brethren; the whole thus corresponding, in point of number, with the Apostles and seventy-two disciples of Christ. But the inmates were neither sinless nor spotless; many irregularities existed in the foundation, and consequently, Sion was among the first of the larger monastic institutions suppressed by Henry VIII. The estimated yearly value was 1,944 l. 11 s. 8-1/2 d., now worth 38,891 l. 14 s. 2d.